{"id":1524,"date":"2016-06-28T12:25:09","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T16:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1524"},"modified":"2016-06-28T12:25:09","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T16:25:09","slug":"brion-mcclanahans-9-presidents-screwed-america-four-tried-save-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2016\/06\/brion-mcclanahans-9-presidents-screwed-america-four-tried-save-review.html","title":{"rendered":"Brion McClanahan’s “9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her”: A Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend and colleague of mine just sent me a NY Times <\/em>article by Robert Reich in which the latter contends that the Republicans are acting \u201cunconstitutionally\u201d by refusing hearings to any of Barack Obama\u2019s Supreme Court nominees. I replied\u2014admittedly, a bit too abruptly\u2014that the Democrats feign concern about abiding by the Constitution only when it suits their purposes.<\/p>\n

I stand by this position. But I know that the same can be said for Republicans.<\/p>\n

Brion McClanahan\u2019s latest book underscores in spades this bipartisan disregard of the Constitution. His 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her <\/em>(Regnery: 2016) is a tailor-made book for the lover of American political history. Moreover, though a piece of scholarship of the first order, it is, refreshingly, written in prose that is accessible to any remotely curious reader.<\/p>\n

Another welcoming feature of McClanahan\u2019s analysis is its indisputably non-partisan tone. Unlike Robert Reich, McClanahan\u2019s repulsion from unconstitutional governance is not selectively determined by ideological prejudice and political gain. It is principled. That this is so becomes obvious as soon as one begins thumbing one\u2019s way through 9 Presidents.<\/em><\/p>\n

McClanahan notes that the concerns of the anti-Federalists began to materialize as early on as George Washington\u2019s tenure in office.<\/p>\n

While \u201cWashington\u2019s first administration was a model for the constitutional exercise of the presidential powers,\u201d his second administration was not. For starters, though he was constitutionally required to seek the \u201cadvice and consent\u201d of Congress when it came to issues of war and treaties, in 1793, in the wake of the bloody French Revolution, Washington acted unilaterally by essentially breaking America\u2019s treaty with France by issuing his \u201cProclamation of Neutrality.\u201d James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were among those who viewed this move as the stuff of, not presidents of Constitutional Republics, but monarchs.<\/p>\n

Washington also crushed the so-called \u201cWhiskey Rebellion,\u201d a move that was unconstitutional on multiple grounds.<\/p>\n

Yet Washington is not among the cast of characters that McClanahan charges with having \u201cscrewed up America,\u201d of having grossly, routinely undermined the Constitution. This ignominious distinction the author endows upon such worthies as Andrew Jackson; Abraham Lincoln; Theodore Roosevelt; Woodrow Wilson; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Harry Truman; Lyndon Johnson; Richard Nixon; and Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

It would be a mistake, however, to think that McClanahan treats this list as exhaustive. Like Washington, there are several presidents\u2014George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush are three notable examples\u2014who don\u2019t have chapters reserved for them, but whose flagrant abuses of the Constitution the author meticulously documents.<\/p>\n

McClanahan knows that by including Lincoln in his list of presidents who \u201cscrewed up America,\u201d he will shock the contemporary sensibilities of many readers. Yet he also makes a compelling case that any such list that omitted \u201cHonest Abe\u201d would be downright dishonest, for Lincoln, \u201cmore than any president who came before him, created the blueprint for the modern presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n

If ever there was a \u201cfundamentally transformative\u201d president, it was Lincoln, the man who presided over the transformation of the American political system from \u201ca federal republic to a consolidated nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through a chain of the most cogent reasoning, McClanahan reveals how and why the Southern states that formed the Confederacy were indeed justified, constitutionally speaking, in seceding from the Union. Lincoln, thus, acted unconstitutionally in treating secession as a \u201crebellion.\u201d Yet even conceding, for argument\u2019s sake, that Lincoln was right about this<\/em> matter, he was, from the standpoint of the Constitution, terribly wrong in how he proceeded to address it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLincoln,\u201d McClanahan explains, \u201cviolated the Constitution and his oath by unilaterally calling up the \u2018militia\u2019 to subdue \u2018combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law.\u201d The problem, here, is that the Constitution authorizes Congress\u2014not the Executive branch\u2014to do such things.<\/p>\n

However, McClanahan remarks, \u201cthese violations of the Constitution were only the beginning.\u201d The 16th<\/sup> president, he continues, \u201cpresided over the most oppressive and lawless general government in American history to that point, one that has only been surpassed by the imperial presidencies of the twentieth century.\u201d Lincoln\u2019s \u201cunilateral suspension of habeas corpus <\/em>was ruled unconstitutional by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney\u201d\u2014and yet \u201cLincoln ignored the ruling [.]\u201d His administration \u201carrested over ten thousand Northern <\/em>Americans for their opposition to the war, mostly newspaper editors and politically well-connected citizens\u201d (emphases original) [.]<\/p>\n

There are many more violations of the Constitution of which Lincoln was guilty, but space constraints preclude enumeration of them here.<\/p>\n

\u201cProgressive\u201d Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, given \u201chis belief that\u2026the Constitution was an outdated piece of parchment subject to elastic interpretation and the will of the executive,\u201d was the first of the 20th<\/sup> century imperial presidents. Even some of his fellow Republicans in Congress objected to his blatant subversion of the Constitution in executing his \u201cSquare Deal\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n

While Roosevelt was the first of the last century\u2019s imperial presidents, he was far from the last. Woodrow Wilson, who \u201clamented that the founding generation did not have the foresight to call for a closer link between the executive and legislative branches\u201d and who, to remedy this alleged weakness, regarded the Constitution as \u201corganic,\u201d \u201cwas a\u2026pioneer in unconstitutional executive authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ratcheted things up considerably by ramming his \u201cNew Deal\u201d \u201cthrough Congress with a personal zeal unmatched by anyone who had held the office before him.\u201d Yet FDR\u2019s successor, Harry Truman, \u201chad become the most progressive president in American history\u201d by the time his nearly eight years in office had come to a close.<\/p>\n

The four presidents who tried to \u201csave\u201d America by exercising admirable, if imperfect, constitutional constraint are Jefferson, John Tyler, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge. Not unsurprisingly, though, and with the exception of that of Jefferson\u2019s, the presidencies of these last three are ordinarily regarded by historians as either unremarkable or even failed. This, however, reveals more about the extent to which these same historians subscribe to the model of the imperial\u2014to repeat, the unconstitutional<\/em>\u2014presidency than it speaks to these forgotten presidents themselves.<\/p>\n

By the measure of the Constitution-as-ratified, Tyler, Cleveland, and Coolidge join Jefferson as among the best presidents in American history.<\/p>\n

Brion McClanahan\u2019s Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America and the Four Who Tried to Save Her <\/em>is must reading for everyone who is more interested in preserving the Constitution than in preserving their respective parties.<\/p>\n

During this heated election season, it is also timelier than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend and colleague of mine just sent me a NY Times article by Robert Reich in which the latter contends that the Republicans are acting \u201cunconstitutionally\u201d by refusing hearings to any of Barack Obama\u2019s Supreme Court nominees. 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